Pant-like absorbent garments, such as adult incontinence wear as well as infant and children""s diapers, swim wear and training pants, typically have adhesive fasteners on the sides for donning and removal, or else rely on the waist opening and leg openings to slide on and off the wearer. Adhesive fasteners wear out in as little as one use. Therefore, if a care giver checks the status of the wearer""s absorbent garment contents by unfastening an adhesive fastener, the garment often must be replaced due to a worn out adhesive fastener even if the absorbent garment itself is not in need of changing.
Absorbent garments that slide on and off a wearer are often messy when full. Furthermore, in order to remove such absorbent garments, the wearer""s clothing covering the absorbent garments, such as pants, must be completely removed. Checking the status of the wearer""s absorbent garment contents is often just as cumbersome as changing the absorbent garment.
There is a need or desire for pant-like, personal care absorbent garments that have refastenable side seams for ease of removal and donning without complete removal of a wearer""s clothing.
The present invention is directed to pant-like absorbent garments having hook and loop fasteners applied at the sides of the garments. The resulting absorbent garments have refastenable side seams and can be easily fitted to and removed from a wearer without complete removal of a wearer""s clothing.
The refastenable side seams extend from a waist opening to each of two leg openings between a front panel and a back panel. Each of the refastenable side seams includes a fastening component and a mating fastening component, each of which comprises either a hook material or a loop material. A portion of the mating fastening component can be die-cut in a sinusoidal or other nesting shape, to allow the mating fastening component to be bonded to the garment after the mating fastening component is folded.
The resulting refastenable seams can be lap seams, dual fastened lap seams, standing butt seams, or dual fastened standing butt seams.
With the foregoing in mind, it is a feature and advantage of the invention to provide a pant-like absorbent garment that can be easily applied to and easily removed from a wearer without the need to entirely remove the wearer""s clothing.